Finding Happiness in Los Angeles

by Oliver Markus Malloy

  Her mother was an alcoholic. She and Carmen got into a lot of fights. Carmen felt like she was the responsible adult and she had to take care of her mother and her brother. Her dad had left them when she was just a baby.

  Carmen used to have a boyfriend, Eric, but they had broken up a few weeks ago and now she was single. And that's why she wrote me. She wanted to get to know me.

  She had a really young voice. She sounded like she was 16. The more she wanted to talk about sex and relationships, the more uncomfortable I got. I told her that I couldn't talk to her about that stuff, because she sounded like she was underage.

  She laughed: "You so stupid! I'm twenty!"

  I told her I didn't believe her. Something just didn't seem right. I told her I wanted to see her driver's license to confirm her age. She scanned her license and emailed it to me. She really was twenty. Still, something didn't seem right.

  She worked at a pizza place. And she was going to make-up school, to become a cosmetologist. Go figure! I guess she rrreally loved make-up.

  Since she lived in California and I in Florida, she was three hours behind me. When it was evening for her, it was already night time for me. She always called me right after work or school. A lot of times we talked until 2 or 3 am my time. Often it was just her telling me what was happening on her TV at the moment. Whenever I wanted to hang up, she'd say: "No! Keep me company until I fall asleep!"

  I wondered if she went to bed with all that make-up on, or wiped it off. Then I wondered what her face looked like without make-up.

  I enjoyed talking to her, and I didn't want to be rude. So I stayed on the phone with her. It wasn't like I had anything better to do. I tried to avoid the girls in Fort Myers, and I was doing pretty good so far. Hanging out with George, chatting with people who read my book, or talking to Jenny and Carmen on the phone was pretty much all I did.

  Some of the local girls still texted or called me occasionally, but I ignored them as best as I could.

  Sonya, Lucy and Anita were back in jail. Jasmine was living with Snickers. Veronica and Wendy were living in Boston. Nicole was tricking on Backpage. Haley was back to being a bargain bin hooker on Palm Beach Boulevard. I didn't hear from Abby anymore. I guess she was back with Wendell.

  One day Carmen called me up crying. Her boss at the pizza parlor had fired her. She said it was because he was trying to sleep with her, but she rejected his advances.

  Now she had no money coming in, and she couldn't ask her alcoholic mother for money either, she said. She didn't ask me for money, but it felt like she was waiting for me to offer. I didn't. One thing I had learned from my experiences with manipulative drug addicts was that they knew exactly how to get what they wanted, without even asking for it.

  They simply claim there's a catastrophic problem in their lives that requires cash to resolve, and then they pause. And after a few seconds of awkward silence, a codependent Richard Gere impersonator like me offers to pay for it, so that we can feel like the hero who helped a damsel in distress. And on top of that we think it was our idea to pay for it.

  From that point on she always made little comments about things she would love to buy, but didn't have the money for. I treated it like normal small talk. When she said she'd love to have a hamster, I told her that dogs were my favorite animals. When she told me she would love to buy this big set of expensive make-up, I told her that I didn't understand why girls love to have so many different types of lotions, perfumes, nail polish, eyeliner, etc.

  Sometimes one of her girlfriends came over in the evening and they'd watch a movie and drink. Afterwards Carmen would call me back. Sometimes she didn't. She said her girlfriend slept over, because she was too drunk to drive home.

  Can you guess where this is going?

  One day she sent me pictures of her new hamster. She said her name was Princess.

  "Cute! Where did you get her?" I asked.

  "My mom got her for me, to cheer me up," she replied. "Ohh, they have so many cool accessories for hamsters! I'm looking at this pet store website. They have hamster wheels. And see-through balls so the hamster can run around the house in it. Princess would love that! Ohhh, and they have tiny little hamster outfits! I want one! Princess would look so cute in a tiny little dinosaur outfit! Ohhh, they even have princess outfits! That would be so perfect for her!"

  "Wow! I didn't know they sell so much stuff for hamsters," I replied.

  Then there was silence.

  She was waiting for me to offer to buy her some stuff for her furball. But I didn't, even though it was on the tip of my tongue. But I knew better.

  After a few more seconds, she finally came straight out and asked for it: "I just emailed you the link to the online pet store. Check it out! You know, a good boyfriend would totally buy me some stuff for Princess," she joked.

  "Boyfriend?" I asked and laughed. "Who said anything about me being your boyfriend? We've never even met! I've never even seen you naked! You live on the other side of the country!"

  "Oh shut up! You know you love me," she said and laughed.

  Later that night she locked her bedroom door and said she was gonna take some pictures for me.

  "What kinda pictures?" I asked.

  "You'll see!" she teased.

  She sent me topless pictures of her boobs. And a close up of her pussy. She made sure her face wasn't in the pictures.

  "Those are nice," I complimented her.

  "Now you've seen me naked. Now you're my boyfriend," she giggled. "And if you love me, you'll buy me some stuff for Princess!"

  I told her I'd think about it. Maybe tomorrow. It was too late now. I told her I had to get some sleep.

  The next day she also sent me links to the expensive make-up set she wanted, and some fancy perfume.

  Of course I wasn't gonna buy her any of that stuff. If I wanted to get played, I didn't need to import a player from California. I had a wide selection of master-manipulators to choose from right here in Florida.

  A few days later Carmen was really angry at her mom. She told me her mom had gone out to drink the night before. She got so shitfaced that someone at the bar put her in a cab and sent her home. I guess that wasn't the first time. They called Carmen to give her a heads up.

  She waited up for her mother, but her mom never came home. Carmen got worried about her. She called the nearby bar, and they said her mom had left over half an hour ago. She should have been home by now. Carmen decided to go outside and look for her.

  She found the cab parked on a dark street around the corner from her house. Her mom and the cab driver were both on the backseat, fucking.

  Carmen banged on the windows and screamed at her mom and the cab driver.

  Her mom, still drunk out of her mind and fumbling to put her clothes back on, said she was just showing the cab driver the view of the nearby ocean.

  The cab driver pulled up his pants and kept apologizing. He begged Carmen not to call his boss, because he'd get fired, and his wife would leave him if she found out about his romantic little tryst with Carmen's mom.

  Carmen screamed at him that he raped her drunk, helpless mother. She thought her mother had passed out on the backseat, and the driver took advantage of her.

  But he said that her mother practically begged him to fuck her: "First she said she wanted me to pull over to admire the view, and then she said she wanted to suck my dick. I did not rape her!"

  Carmen told me this wasn't the first time stuff like this happened. Her mother brought guys home all the time. Random guys she met at bars. They were usually drunk when they walked in, in the middle of the night, and the noise would wake up Carmen and her brother. And then she'd hear them fuck, because her mother liked to be loud when she was drunk.

  That's why Carmen and her mom were always fighting. She hated living with her mom and wanted to get away from her.

  A few days later Carmen asked if I had ordered her stuff yet. I said: "No, not yet."

  Another few days later she sent m
e pictures of her hamster in a tiny pink Princess outfit. It wasn't unusual for her to send me pictures. She always emailed me snapshots she took with her phone. Sometimes it was a picture of the meal she was about to eat. Or the sunset. Or her nails. Or a picture of her mom, passed out drunk on the couch.

  At one point she asked me if I wanted to see her morning face. So I could see what she looked like when she just woke up.

  "Sure," I said.

  She sent me a picture. She had bed hair. She had dyed it golden blonde recently. It looked nice. A strain of hair hung into to her face and covered one eye. She clutched the sheet with her fist and it covered the lower half of her face. But I could still see what she looked like without make-up. She was pretty.

  I think sending me that picture was a big deal for her. I don't think a lot of people had ever seen her without all that make-up caked on her face. I think she felt more naked in that picture, than in the nude close-ups she had sent me a few days earlier.

  I told her that she looked great in the picture. That made her happy.

  Later that night she opened up a little bit more about herself. I had asked her early on, if she had ever been molested as a kid, because I had learned that that was a common thing among drug addicted girls. She said no.

  But now she told me that she had lied. Now she said that one of her mother's boyfriends used to sneak into Carmen's bedroom when she was still a little girl. He'd quietly walk into her room in the middle of the night. She'd wake up and find him sitting on the bed next to her, looking at her and touching her all over.

  Sometimes he had a knife in his hand. She said he never actually threatened to kill her with it, but he'd slowly run the blade across her face and chest. The fear in her eyes seemed to turn him on.

  "Did your mom know he did that?" I asked.

  She choked up a little and said: "I told her about it, but she didn't believe me. She just screamed at me that I was a whore and that I was trying to break them up, because I was jealous."

  Wow. That's pretty fucked up.

  "Is your mom still seeing that guy?" I asked.

  "No, they broke up few years ago. Since then she's been drinking like crazy. And she's always really mean to me. I think she's really lonely and she blames me for it. I wish I could get out of here. I wish I could come live with you in Florida."

  And there it was again.

  The pause.

  The awkward silence.

  "If you want, you can come live with me," I said.

  God damn.

  It just slipped right out before I could stop myself.

  She sounded excited: "Do you really mean that? I would love to come live with you! I could finish cosmetology school over there! And we could have so much fun together!"

  That sounded strangely familiar.

  She looked for flights to Fort Myers. She was serious. But was I? Did I really want her to come to Florida? How would I explain to my parents that I had a 20-year-old girl from California live with me in Florida, the next time I skyped with them? What would they think if they saw a picture of her, with all that ridiculous make-up?

  "Wow, these flights are expensive," she said. "I can't afford them."

  Pause.

  Awkward silence.

  She was waiting for me to offer to pay for her flight.

  "Maybe you can ask your mom for the money," I suggested.

  "My mom is a nurse. She makes a lot of money, but she won't give me any," she said.

  We talked for a little while longer, until it was time to go to sleep. "Good night. I love you," she said before we hung up.

  "I love you too," I replied. What else was I supposed to say?

  After that, we said "I love you" every night when we hung up.

  Did I really mean it? No, not really. I just said it because I thought she expected me to say it.

  But hey, who knows, maybe things could actually work out with us, if I sent her the money for a flight and she'd come live with me. Maybe once she got away from her mother, and she felt better about herself, she wouldn't feel the need to hide behind all that make-up anymore.

  I thought about what daily life would look like if Carmen lived with me. I pictured us hanging out, having sex, going shopping, going to the beach, and traveling. I was torn. I guess it could really work. But what if she didn't get over her make-up tic? And what if she changed her mind about coming here? Would she refund me the money for the flight? Of course not.

  After everything I had been through with the girls here in Florida, did I really want to send a bunch of cash to some girl on the other side of the country? If she turned out to be just another con-artist, I'd have no one to blame but myself.

  A couple of years ago, on a flight to Germany, the guy sitting next to me was on his way to Russia. We chatted for a bit to pass the time. He told me that he was on a dating site where you could meet Russian women. He said they love American men over there. Mainly because the quality of life in Russia wasn't that great, and they preferred to live in America.

  "But you gotta be careful with these Russian women," he said. "A lot of them are scam artists. They use fake pictures on their profiles and flirt with a whole bunch of different men. They tell each guy that they want to visit him in America. The guy sends her the money for a plane ticket and then never hears from her again. Meanwhile the woman, if it even is a woman, does this to hundreds of guys and makes a ton of money."

  That's why he preferred to fly to Russia himself and meet the women there, instead of wiring a bunch of cash to complete strangers on the other side of the world.

  I was thinking about that guy's warning. That's why I didn't want to send Carmen hundreds of dollars. I offered a compromise: "Pay the $300 for a one-way ticket to Florida yourself. And I'll give you $300 for a return ticket when you get here. That way you won't be stuck here if you change your mind about living with me. If you want to go back to Los Angeles, you can leave any time you want."

  "That's a great idea!" she said. "Ok, yeah, I think I can work part time or babysit or something, and make $300 in a few days."

  A few days later, Carmen sent me a picture of the expensive make-up set she had asked me for. I didn't order it for her.

  "Wow. Nice. Who bought it for you?" I asked.

  "My mom gave me the money!" she chirped.

  "I thought you said your mom never gives you money," I replied.

  "Sometimes she does," Carmen said and then changed the topic.

  Hmm. If her mom gave her money, then why wasn't she saving it until she had $300 for her one-way ticket?

  Something definitely wasn't right here.

  At some point Carmen casually mentioned that her ex-boyfriend Eric got his own place in the Torrance neighborhood of Los Angeles.

  "What?! You're still talking to Eric?" I asked. "I thought you guys broke up months ago?"

  "Yeah, but we're still friends. He keeps saying that he wants to get back together. He wants me to move in with him."

  "He keeps saying that? When? Do you still talk to him?" I asked again.

  "Sometimes." she replied.

  "Do you still see him?"

  "Yeah, sometimes." she replied casually.

  That's when it clicked.

  "Did he buy you the hamster?" I asked.

  "Yeah, he did," she giggled. She didn't feel guilty at all. She acted like she got caught in a little harmless white lie.

  "And he bought you all the other hamster stuff?"

  "Yeah."

  "And he bought you that make-up set?"

  "Yeah," she giggled again.

  "When was the last time you saw him?" I asked. I already knew the answer.

  "The other night," she said.

  Still... no guilt. No remorse.

  "The other night when you told me your friend was coming over and she spent the night at your house again because she was too drunk to drive home?"

  "Yeah," she giggled.

  What the fuck was wrong with this girl? She just admitted th
at she had been lying to me for weeks. She just admitted that her ex-boyfriend wasn't really her ex at all. She was still seeing him. He was buying her stuff, because she was his girlfriend. And he slept over and they had sex. And she admitted it, just like that. Like it was nothing. No big deal.

  "So this whole time while you were telling me that you love me, and that you wanna come live with me, you were really still dating Eric?" I asked. I just wanted to be absolutely sure I understood what was going on. Maybe I misunderstood her somehow.